In This Article:

Welcome Series Primer

In This Article:

Overview

When to use it

New supporters are often the most enthusiastic about your work and ready to learn more. A Welcome Series of emails (or nurture program) can harness this excitement and transform it into action on behalf of your mission. Welcome Series email have much higher click through and open rates than other emails, so they can help you lay the foundation for a long-lasting and authentically engaged relationship between your supporters and your organization.

Check out our EWG case study - they used a Salsa Welcome Series to activate and engage a list of over a million supporters!

How to get there

There are a few different ways to create a Welcome Series in Salsa, but here we're going to talk through one specific use case - how to Welcome all new supporters no matter how they were added to your database. Read our related documentation to configure a nurture campaign which is specific to a particular page.

This page previously documented a process that would not work for supporters created via a donation page. We have updated this page and the new process will appropriately welcome any new supporters.

Step 1: Create the Query

Query Option 1 - All New Supporters

This simple query will identify find all supporters created in the last 24 hours. Remember to give the query a name so that it will be saved.

Remember to give the query a name before you click so that it will be saved.

Query Option 2 - All New Supporters Created via Web Pages

This slightly more complex query will identify all supporters created via a web page in the last 24 hours. This query will filter out supporters which were added to your database by an import.

How does it work? This query finds supporters who meet either of these condition sets:

Those created by via Salsa donation page in the past 24 hours (Source = "Web Donation" for those supporters).

Those created via any other Salsa page in the past 24 hours (Source = "Web" for those supporters).

FYI: If a supporter was added to your database via an import, the Source will equal "File" in their supporter record.

Step 2: Use the Query as the basis of a Smart Group

Navigate to the Manage Groups area of the Supporter Package.

Create a new group for your Welcome Series.

On the Smart Group Options tab of the Group workflow, change this group to a Greedy Smart Group.

Select the query you named in step 1 (the one that finds your new supporters).

your group.

There are two types of Smart Groups - Regular Smart Groups and "Greedy" Smart Groups. Sending streaming emails as group join triggers will only work correctly when using "Greedy" Smart Groups. Once supporters are added to a Greedy Smart Group, they're never removed (even if they no longer meet the conditions of the query).

Step 3: Add Streaming Emails to your Group

Create one Reply Email (which will be sent to new supporters immediately after they are added to the Smart Group).

Create one or more Timed Triggers and vary the field Hours Delayed for Timed Trigger.

After you create the Streaming Emails, add them to your Welcome Series Group on the Options tab of the Group workflow.

Optional Step 4: Use a Suppression Group

While your supporters are in the middle of their Welcome Series of email, they're on a journey that you've carefully crafted to welcome them. You may choose to prevent other emails that your organization is sending from going to these fragile new supporters. Here's how you do it.

First, create a query to identify supporters who are in the queue for the final Streaming Email in your Welcome Series, but have not actually received it yet.

Make that query the basis for a Smart Group (NOT a Greedy Smart Group).

When you set the targets for your email blasts, add a condition for NOT member of Welcome Series Suppression Group because you DON'T want to send the email to them if they're in the suppression group.

I've updated that note accordingly to explain why - unfortunately there is no way for Salsa to recognize that they're a new supporter through a donation page. We're working on a few other possible solutions which I will share as soon as possible.

In that case, you wouldn't need to create a greedy smart group. Simply set up your four separate Welcome emails, and set the Timed Trigger Delay option to 24, 168, 336, and 504. That will make sure they send at those intervals. Hope this helps!

Do you have a new update? It's been more than a year since you noticed this problem. Other platforms are able to execute welcome messages successfully, so it's hard for my clients to accept that "there is no way" for this process to work.